


Past Imperfect

by town_without_heart



Category: The Flash (TV 2014), The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Angst, Character Death(s), Dark, Depressing, Kind of tweaked?, M/M, Time Travel, What If...?, no happy endings here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 21:25:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5681311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/town_without_heart/pseuds/town_without_heart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Eobard?” she says, and she grins like the sun. “A distinguished name for a distinguished man.”</p><p>This is how the story begins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Past Imperfect

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Past Imperfect 莫比烏斯之環](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7051231) by [jls20011425](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jls20011425/pseuds/jls20011425)



> So, I was working on my next chapter for Bolt from the Blue, and this idea would not leave me alone! It's... strange? Also, really depressing? Like, there is no chance of a happy ending. Not ever. I'm sorry? I probably need a better summary.
> 
> For fic updates and cupcakes, my tumblr is: townwithoutheart.

***

He opens his eyes. The first thing he sees is an angel – a woman with dirty blonde hair, a gentle cascade of curls that fall just below her shoulders. Her eyes are piercing blue, strangely familiar, deep and clear. There is a halo, a blinding glow all around her face, and it takes him a moment to understand that her head is blocking the overhead light.

“Good morning, sunshine,” she says. Her teeth are straight, white. Her smile stretches across her face and it looks – genuine. That smile is also strangely familiar, and though he struggles to place it, to make sense of the thoughts and numbers and images and words running through his head, running, running, running, never stopping – 

“How do you feel?” she asks him, and he can’t make sense of it. His body is cold, the perpetual chill in his fingertips creeping up the veins in his arms, like a thief in the night, and it squeezes tightly at his heart. He is sore. He doesn’t need to move to feel the ache in his fingers, his toes. His head is foggy and so completely overloaded with thoughts – running, running, running – and it’s –

“Confused,” he replies. His voice is rusty, and the word creaks from his throat like an ancient doorway, opened suddenly after one hundred years of disuse. 

The angel – woman, she is a woman, he is lying on a table, this is a lab? – smiles at him again. She reaches out a hand to slowly stroke his hair back from his sweaty brow. How can he be sweating, one corner of his mind asks, when he is so very cold? “I imagine you are,” she says gently. Her hand on his forehead is comforting and it grounds him, helps to slow some of the jumble amassing in his head.

“Do you know your name?” she asks him, still smiling, still gentle.

He does. He thinks he does. He opens his mouth to speak it, but it suddenly seems so far from his reach. 

“... eo...” he whispers. There. That sounds right. “... bard...” 

“Eobard?” she says, and she grins like the sun. “A distinguished name for a distinguished man.”

This is how the story begins.

***

Her name is Lianna Thawne. She brought him back to life. There is no other explanation he can take from what she tells him.

“I found you,” she tells him as she trims his hair, her delicate hands flutter like tiny birds, darting forward to tug a strand into place here, to snip a wayward lock there. “Frozen, like Captain America in the ice over a century ago. But you were broken, Eobard, in so many ways. There were pieces missing, and no one thought I could ever wake you. They told me to give up, but _that_ is not the way of the Thawnes.”

She spins on her heel, twirling once in a full circle as she laughs. “I did it! They said I couldn’t, but I did! I filled in the pieces, all the holes that I found, and I made you whole again. Awake, aware, and so _alive_!”

“The year,” she says, spinning back to him as she tucks his hair into place behind his ear, setting the trimmers down, “is 2151. It will take time, but I know that you’ll be okay here. I’ll be with you, you see? Every step of the way. And you’re a genius now, you know. All those empty spaces in your brain, I filled them up. You can be anyone now, do anything.”

And then she smiles, that angel smile that he’s becoming very well acquainted with, and she singsongs, “And I’ll never be alone again~”

She pulls him up from the chair, tugging at his hands as she angles him towards the mirror. She covers his eyes with her hands as she positions him in front of it, then pulls them away with a “Ta-da!”

He looks at the face in the mirror, taking in his features - blue eyes, dirty blonde hair. He stares at the image without recognition, but as Lianna sways beside him, humming happily to herself, her blue eyes glowing, her dirty blonde curls bouncing cheerfully with every move she makes – he understands.

She gives him her name. He is – Thawne. Eobard Thawne. A distinguished name for a distinguished member of a distinguished family.

***

“What do you remember?” she asks him one day. It has been a month since he’s woken up and he does not poke at the memories that flit at the corners of his mind, for fear that they may poke back. He’s smarter than that, now.

“Very little,” he replies easily. He is learning to use the data pads, learning to sort through the numbers in his head, translate them into formulas and equations. The work he does now – the work he does with his “sister” – feels right. He is part of something more. He is a valuable member, even if their team consists of only two.

“Try,” she says gently. “Please try, for me?”

He places the pad down and closes his eyes. “My name,” he says. “Only my name.”

“Nothing else? No images? Or feelings?”

He ponders this, reaching out to the edges of his mind, beyond the numbers and the words and remembers this feeling – running, running, running – and there is. A man? A man in red. With a lighting bolt on his chest. His hands are bloody. And there is a feeling in him. A feeling that is – heavy. _Oh, god,_ he thinks, dazed. _It’s. I remember this. How did I forget?_

“What do you remember?” Lianna asks him again, and his eyes snap open.

“The Flash,” he says. He grits his teeth, because the feeling hasn’t left him. It’s been a month since he woke up, and now that he remembers this, he knows he can never forget it again. “I hate him. I hate him. I–”

Lianna looks at him, blue eyes widening because he can’t stop. He is so – so – _angry_.

“– _hate_ him.”

***

It’s like a disease. He cannot get the image from his mind. And the hate. It sits in his stomach, and it taints everything he does. Lianna sees the change in him, but she doesn’t know how to help. For all that she put him back together, she doesn’t know how to fix this. She digs up information for him – on how the Flash became a metahuman, on the failed experiment and the freak lighting that gave him his powers. She tells him about the wonders of what the man could do – to run up buildings, across water, through objects. She tells him the man has been dead for a _century_ , but it’s not enough.

 _Time travel_ , he wonders, and everything slots into place.

He is a genius. It’s child’s play to recreate the experiment that gave the Flash his abilities, to predict the patterns of weather and plan for lighting to strike. It’s insanity that allows him to follow through on this, and he wakes nine months later from his coma to Lianna’s tearful expression. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” she screams and hits him with a pillow. Then she flings herself into his arms and sobs, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me alone again.”

He gently stokes her back and he feels – sorrow? That he causes this woman – just a girl, really, parents both dead, and so many family members, but not one of them close – such pain. She gave him life, and somehow, he breaks her heart.

“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I promise, I’ll always come back.”

***

The lightning is in his blood. It’s amazing. He is part of something – more. He is connected to the Speedforce of which he has read so much about, and it is – amazing. Lianna smiles at him, across the room of their laboratory, and together they learn, about speed, about power, and most importantly, about precision.

He doesn’t tell her the first time he travels back in time. It’s only a few hours, but he feels elation. He will travel back in time. He will meet the Flash in battle. And he will kill the man. Only then will he let go of this blinding, biting hate. Only then will he be ready to move forward, and with his sister by his side, they will take this world by storm. She will never be alone again.

***

A few hours, a few days, and then – decades, a century. The first time he meets the Flash in battle – wearing a mockery of the man’s own suit, a yellow uniform with a red bolt of lightning on the chest – he almost dies. “HOW MANY!” the Flash screams at him, and the force of the blow knocks him clean across the field where they fight. “HOW MANY YEARS WILL YOU HAUNT ME?”

The man in red stands above him. His eyes are so blue, and there are tears in them. _How strange_ , he thinks. The Flash’s mouth is twisted, and the expression is one that he recognizes from the mirror – hate. _You hate me too_ , he thinks, overjoyed. _You feel this, just as I do. Just as terrible, as self-destructive, as obsessive. You hate me!_

The Flash reaches down and picks him up with a single hand, fingers clenched into a fist at the base of his throat. The grip is so tight he begins to see spots, and then the Flash mashes their mouths together in a kiss that is one part violence and two parts desperation. 

_What–?_

It is a moment that will haunt him for years to come. The kiss hits something so far down inside of him, buried so deep he couldn’t even attempt to unearth it, let alone examine it. The Flash’s grip loosens, and it feels as though the world has turned upside down and inside out as the man in red whispers, “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. But it’s not enough. It will never _be_ enough.”

The Flash drops him like a hot iron, turns, and runs. Running, running – always running. When he finds his way back to the future, Lianna wraps him in her arms and says, “Why are you playing with fire, brother mine? Why can’t you let the dead rest in peace?”

“Because I hate him,” he tries to explain. He remembers the kiss, the tangle of emotions in the other man’s voice. “I hate him,” he repeats, and that’s the truth, isn’t it? The empty gnawing ache inside of him, the hole that even Lianna can’t fill, that piece of him that is always so cold, so hurt. It’s the truth, isn’t it?

“I hate him,” he says again. “I hate him.”

***

Jumping back and forth throughout the decades – back, to fight the Flash, to taunt him, to destroy him. The years pass and they become so evenly matched that neither of them can gain a foothold over the other. The Flash never beats him so soundly as that first encounter, and they don’t share another kiss. They just – fight. They fight and try to kill one another and no one ever seems to win.

Some days, it’s exhilarating.

Most days, it’s exhausting.

And every time he returns to the future, Lianna is there, waiting for him, a little older, a little sadder. She always welcomes him back, but there’s something in her eyes that troubles him. He asks her about it, just once, and she smiles even as her eyes fill with tears. “I’m sorry,” she tells him. “I’m sorry I’m not enough for you, brother mine. I’m sorry that you’ll never truly be happy.”

He pushes her words from his mind, because he knows the truth – he’s doing this, all of this, so that he will be happy. He wants to let go of his hate, but he can only do that once the Flash is dead. He wants to create a new world with his sister, but first? First he has to destroy the old.

And then, it strikes him, like a bolt of lightning from the blue. To kill the Flash – all he needs to do it go back in time, to before the man gained his powers. Learn his name, go back, and kill him when he was a child. It’s a perfectly elegant solution to this problem that has plagued him for too long.

***

It is both simpler and more difficult than he expected, to find the name of the man who is the Flash. In the future, he hunts through databases, sifting for the information, a task akin to finding a needle in a haystack. In the past, he hunts through people, maiming, torturing, anyone and everyone who might be able to tell him. He is single-minded in his pursuit of this answer, wearing himself thin, eager to destroy his own body if it brings him what he seeks.

Lianna stands next to him as his fingers fly over the keys of his terminal, his eyes desperately searching and not finding any answers. She leans over to kiss him on the cheek, a gentle “Goodnight.”

In his ear, she whispers brokenly, “His name is Barry Allen.”

***

There are so many things that go wrong this night. He travels to the past to kill Barry Allen, only to find that the Flash has followed him, protecting the child from his plans. It takes him about two seconds to create a Plan B, and he stabs Nora Allen through the heart.

As she dies, his connection to the Speedforce is abruptly cut, like the strings of a sad marionette. He falls to his knees, chest heaving, and screams because he should have realized – the Flash is the engine, the originator of the Speedforce. If he doesn’t exist, the Speedforce doesn’t exist.

He is trapped without a way home, and he remembers his promise to Lianna – _I’ll always come back_. He is trapped, but he is a genius, and he has a promise to keep. It may take years, but he has to try. Barry Allen must become the Flash, must become fast enough to generate and recharge the Speedforce.

The irony is not lost on him. He traveled back in time to destroy the Flash. Now, to get home, he must create him. Is this fate? Is fate really this cruel? On the empty road, surrounded by the glow of street lights, there is no one to answer him. It is here he lays the foundations of his plan, and identifies the key players. One name resounds in his mind; he has done his research and knows it intimately – Harrison Wells.

Running, running, running – he has a face to steal.

***

The years pass for him like the turning of pages, and he often finds his thought turning to the future, to where his sister waits for him. This is hell. This is a hell of his own making, because even now he is unable to let go of his hate. Years and years, sitting on this feeling, watching Barry Allen grow from a child to a man, and he cannot let it go.

Barry Allen becomes the Flash. The future is intact. The Speedforce begins to grow once more, recharging like a battery.

He is always looking forward, but sometimes... sometimes, he must look back. He remembers the first time he met the Flash in the flesh. He remembers the ragged scream and the kiss. The kiss that is burned into his memory, that he can recall with perfect clarity and detail even now. 

From his secret room in S.T.A.R. Labs, he looks at the screens that monitor Barry Allen. He watches the young man smile, innocent, and laugh, carefree. “How many years will you haunt me?” he asks the empty room. Wisely, Gideon does not ask for clarification.

***

Everything falls apart. He is discovered, and there is a battle for which he did not plan. Metahumans, regular humans, weapons – a melting pot for disaster. Cisco and Caitlin are back at S.T.A.R. Labs – he can hear them through the microphone that he wears, the one he tapped into Barry’s communications ages ago. Firestorm is here, flitting through the air like a demented pixie. Oliver Queen is perched on one of the buildings above, attempting to lay down a barrage of suppressing fire. Captain Cold and the Golden Glider are back to back, twin streams of glittering gold and frozen ice streaking through the air and damaging buildings and street alike as they try to hit him. He hears Heatwave laughing in the background, apparently delighted by Firestorm’s flight, and the Flash is the only one who can keep up with him as he runs towards the enemies in his path.

He knocks the Flash back, spinning on one heel to plant his foot on Captain Cold’s face, smashing the frail man into the concrete with lethal force. The Golden Glider shrieks with fury, turning her weapon on him – he dodges easily, darting up the wall to knock Queen from his roost, and as the Flash goes to catch Queen, he darts back down, his hand vibrating, slicing through the air as he digs it into the Golden Glider’s chest. He tears her heart out without a thought, her eyes widening with horror. It happens so fast she can’t even scream, and he catches her body and throws it at the Flash, then turns again, only to get an unexpected face full of fire from Heatwave – or possibly Firestorm. He feels the sharp sting of something – arrows, likely – piercing his back, and there is screaming and more fire and the world goes black.

***

When he opens his eyes, he is laying on a table. Everything hurts and he is cold. He half expects to see Lianna by his side, his precious sister, smiling at him as if he is a miracle.

Barry Allen stares at him through red-rimmed eyes from where he sits beside the table. “You killed them,” he says without preamble. His voice is hoarse from crying. “Lisa’s dead, Len’s gone, and you – I can’t. How am I supposed to forgive that? Forgive you?”

“Don’t,” he replies without hesitation. “Hate me. Hate me like I hate you.”

“Why do you hate me so much?” Barry asks.

_Because I woke up in the future with a picture of you in my mind. Your hands were covered in blood and you were crying. I think you killed my world, if only I could remember._

He says nothing. 

“I’m sorry,” Barry says. “I’m sorry, but this is the way it has to be.” He lifts his hands – red with blood – and one of them begins to vibrate. 

“I will haunt you for the rest of your life,” he tells Barry without smiling. He understands now, just a little, what the Flash felt the very first time he ever traveled through time. “I get a last request, don’t I?”

Barry nods, and he stops his hand from vibrating.

“Kiss me,” he says.

Barry slides off of his seat, moving forward to stand directly by his side. Barry’s hands are stained red, and though it is hard to see, the entire red suit is sticky with blood.

“Please don’t misunderstand,” Barry says brokenly, tiny, perfect tears sliding down his cheeks. “Nothing is forgiven.” Barry leans over the table and the kiss is just like the one he remembers – desperate, obsessed, angry. He will never see Lianna again, and so he chooses to lose himself in this kiss. Love and hate and a lifetime of misunderstandings – Barry’s hand slides into his chest and it’s gentle but it hurts, and in the end, one of them was always going to die first.

This is how the story ends.

***

Lisa Snart’s funeral is on a rainy Tuesday. Mick Rory stands silently beside Barry Allen as they lower the casket into the ground. They says nothing to each other, offer no words of comfort or condolence. When the funeral is over, Mick Rory turns and walks away. Barry Allen never sees him again.

Back at S.T.A.R. Labs, hidden in the pipeline, there is a thick, imperfect block of ice. It isn’t tested technology, but it’s the best Cisco could come up with on such short notice. During the battle, Leonard Snart’s head smashed into the concrete, caving in his skull. The last thing he sees before his brain shuts down is his precious little sister, hanging limply from the Flash’s arms, his bloody hands a testament to his failure. Lisa Snart is dead, Leonard Snart is brain dead, and the only thing Cisco could think of was to freeze the man in the hopes that one day, technology might be sufficiently advanced enough to heal him.

***

Over one hundred years in the future, a woman named Lianna Thawne smiles gently down at the man on the table. “Do you know your name?” she asks him.

He does. He thinks he does. He opens his mouth to speak it, but it suddenly seems so far from his reach. 

_... leo..._

“... eo...” he whispers. There. That sounds right.

_... nard..._

“... bard...” 

“Eobard?” she says, and she grins like the sun. “A distinguished name for a distinguished man.”

This is how the story begins.

***

**FIN**


End file.
